The Twitter Follow Ratio
Categories: Social Media, Technology
Written By: Koka Sexton
I was chatting it up with a fellow Tweet the other day talking about interesting Twitter apps that we both like to see if anything new has come around. In the conversation we started talking about Twitter Karma and how a good Twitter Follow/Follower ratio matters. I never had given much thought to it but on a base level it makes sense. If you have 10,000 people following you and you only follow 10 of them, you must have some in demand Tweets. On the flip side if you are following 10,000 and only have 10 paying attention to you, you must really be an attention whore.
After a quick Google search we found a site using the Twitter API that can calculate your Twitter Ratio in just a few seconds.
Twitter Friend-Follower Ratio Scale
Here’s how the TFF scale works:
- A ratio of less than 1.0 indicates that you are seeking knowledge (and Twitter Friends), but not getting much Twitter Love in return.
- A ratio of around 1.0 means you are respected among your peers. Either that or you follow your Mom and she follows you.
- A ratio of 2.0 or above shows that you are a popular person and people want to hear what you have to say. You might be a thought leader in your community.
- A TFF Ratio 10 or higher indicates that you’re either a Rock Star in your field or you are an elitist and you cannot be bothered by Twitter’s mindless chatter. You like to hear yourself talk. Luckily others like to hear you talk, too. You may be an ass.
I sent @tffratio a quick message and waited for about 2 minutes and they came back with my results.
So based on this scale, it seems that following your followers works against you. I try to make a point of following the people that follow me. I won’t do it blindly meaning if I see a new follower and they have 0 updates, no profile picture and follow 3,000 people, what’s the point. I know that most people want to increase there Twitter numbers and I am happy to add to that for them.
What I would be really interested in seeing is a Twitter app that not only shows you who is following you but can show you which of your followers actually have mobile updates turned on for you. Does that already exist?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
January 27th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
That totally makes sense Koka. In fact, I go through a process when determining if I want to follow someone back or not. I look at their “Twitter Friend-Follower Ratio” as well as their number of updates. If someone is following over a thousand people with only a couple hundred follows and 3 updates, I won’t follow them back. However if they have the same “Twitter Friend-Follower Ratio” as before, but say 350 updates, I might follow them if they seem pretty interesting.
At any rate, your Twitter scale scored a follow from me.
Ryan Martin’s last blog post..Small Business Websites Need Directory Links
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
[...] Media.We have a lot of conversations in the office about Twitter followers. We talk about the follow/following ratio, and the delicate balance there in. We talk about the concept of the auto-follow, and whether we [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:08 am
trytr565yuo890bvnmbnkiuoiuo4r56y
May 26th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
[...] See everyone you are following and who follows you. More importantly see who you are following that is not following you back or people that follow you and you have not started tracking their updates. With just these few slices of visibility you can select individuals or groups that you can bulk follow or unfollow. This lets you keep a good Twitter follow ratio. [...]